Gaming & Culture —

Space Invaders: Infinity Gene evolves with you

Everyone loves a good retro game, particularly one that straddles the line between old-school aesthetic or design and modernized mechanics. Infinity Gene is perhaps the most promising game I've come across in some time to do just that (this side of the Bit.Trip series, anyway). Easily overshadowed by Square-Enix's bigger titles, Infinity Gene takes the biology of Space Invaders—or perhaps more accurately its souped-up successor Space Invaders Extreme—and puts the evolutionary screws to it yet again.

Evolution appears to be a cornerstone of Infinity Gene, something that directly affects the game's attention-grabbing aesthetic. Judging by the short demo I played, the entire game is presented in simple, generally monochromatic wireframe graphics (think early '80s arcade games like Tempest), with very basic effects suited for the era of gaming it emulates.

The hook is that the further you progress in Infinity Gene, the more complex things get. You may start from the most basic, classic Space Invaders template, but grab a few power-ups and clear a few levels and suddenly your flat, 2D craft has stepped into the third dimension, and enemies are being thrown at you with the complexity and fury of a hardcore shmup. Simply put, the game "evolves" as you play it.

The aesthetic evolution isn't just window dressing, either. During my hands-on time with the game at Square’s booth, there were actually times when the perspective changed from traditional drop-down 2D to a full-on 3D-shooter somewhat resembling Panzer Dragoon or Sin & Punishment without the lock-on. As enemies became more complex, targeting specific parts also became a necessary strategy. It’s still Space Invaders, only now it's on speed. Though Infinity Gene is already out for iPhone, this is definitely one XBLA and PSN release to watch for later this year—it really deserves to be seen and played firsthand.

I think there is a lot of design space to explore in this generation. Now that graphics are "topped out," i.e. the return on investment in graphics just isn't there like it used to be, $$$ should get spent on design. Procedurally generated gameplay is a smart move, as it lets everyone play. My kids can't play a Cave shooter for more than ten seconds, and I am not rushing out to play whatever easy little game they can handle, so to make a game that can actually meet us in the middle is great.

Sounds neat. The one thing I don’t like (and never did) about the classic arcade games is the repetition+volume+speed you got while progressing through the levels. It may not have helped that my earliest gaming memories are of Pawn and Dungeon Master, but I always grew bored and disappointed by arcade games that simply hurled more of the same at you rather than offering something different for your quarters.

Something that starts with a classic, then moves on to a truly more complex gaming experience is much more idea.

But it's also clear to imagine how much work developing such a game would be.

If in a normal space invaders game you have to developer 1 set of graphics, physics, gaming engine, - arguably in an evolutionary version, - you have N times as much work, - where N is the number of steps in the evolution you want to achieve.

If I won the lottery though, - this is the sort of game I'd fund. Honestly it would be the game to end all games.

I'd love to see it eveolve with the player: if you are clearing the boards in no time at all, then it should evolve faster, but if its taking a long time and you miss 70% of your shots then it should be a more leisurely evolution.

Sounds neat. The one thing I don’t like (and never did) about the classic arcade games is the repetition+volume+speed you got while progressing through the levels.

Ah but the reasons behind Space Invaders repetition and speed are classic "do the best with the hardware you're given" limitations.

The 8080 processor was not very powerful. My guess is that it was running at 1MHz. Since the 8080 used multiple cycles per instructions, we're talking an average of around 256K instructions per second!

The game simply ran as fast as it could run, there were no timers, or extra timing loops. As you killed off invaders, there were less things to keep track of, and the game ran faster. The game was always running full speed, adding extra game play to the different levels just wasn't an option!

Sounds neat. The one thing I don’t like (and never did) about the classic arcade games is the repetition+volume+speed you got while progressing through the levels.

Ah but the reasons behind Space Invaders repetition and speed are classic "do the best with the hardware you're given" limitations.

The 8080 processor was not very powerful. My guess is that it was running at 1MHz. Since the 8080 used multiple cycles per instructions, we're talking an average of around 256K instructions per second!

The game simply ran as fast as it could run, there were no timers, or extra timing loops. As you killed off invaders, there were less things to keep track of, and the game ran faster. The game was always running full speed, adding extra game play to the different levels just wasn't an option!

Sounds neat. The one thing I don’t like (and never did) about the classic arcade games is the repetition+volume+speed you got while progressing through the levels.

Ah but the reasons behind Space Invaders repetition and speed are classic "do the best with the hardware you're given" limitations.

The 8080 processor was not very powerful. My guess is that it was running at 1MHz. Since the 8080 used multiple cycles per instructions, we're talking an average of around 256K instructions per second!

The game simply ran as fast as it could run, there were no timers, or extra timing loops. As you killed off invaders, there were less things to keep track of, and the game ran faster. The game was always running full speed, adding extra game play to the different levels just wasn't an option!

That's how fast the CPU was capable of running, because of the price of RAM, etc. they often used clocks less than the max. They also sold CPUs at different clock speeds, the 1MHz being cheaper than the 2MHz part.

I found the Space Invaders schematics online, and it used a 19.9968MHz clock that fed into one of the most bizarre clock circuits I've seen. It goes through a Binary to Decimal decoder, which I assume is used as a divide by 10.

That would make it a 1.99968MHz clock, which is damn close to 2MHz. Still my memory of the instruction speed being a divide by 4 was correct, so we're talking only 500K instructions per second! My phone uses a 550MHz clock and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't approach 500M instructions per second. Making my phone 1000 times faster than the original Space Invaders!

As a side note, according to the market reviews, my phone plays a pretty sluggish version of someone's port of the original Space Invaders game -- and that's because real men program in assembly language, not Java!

Based on the strength of this recommendation, I picked up the iPhone version. Strong gameplay on the iPhone, but I was hoping for some 3D (still worth the $5). Might have to pick up the 360 version as well.